The Invitation
by Zevazo
Summary: Remus is feeling a little depressed. You see, he just got an invitation to Sirius's wedding ... and Sirius had sworn that he loved Remus. What happened? Why is Sirius marrying this pureblood girl, Maria? And can Remus do anything about it?
1. Remus: The Invitation

_Summary_ – Remus is feeling a little depressed. You see, he just got an invitation to Sirius's wedding ... and Sirius had sworn that he loved Remus. What happened? Why is Sirius marrying this pureblood girl, Maria Brogan? And can Remus do anything about it?

_Disclaimer_ – Pretty much everything is J.K. Rowling's. But Maria Brogan is mine, and the text is mine. I'll take whatever I can cling to.

_Rating_ – PG

_Reviews_ – flame me, I like pain. Good reviews are nice, too.

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**The Invitation**

If there's one good thing I can say about her, Sirius, she has excellent taste in wedding invitations. I am quite sure that her chosen china and silver will be equally tasteful. You, of course, wouldn't have helped her choose such things. You never had such patience. Then again, Maria has changed many things about you, hasn't she?

It's a nice, traditional, wizarding wedding to a nice, traditional wizarding girl. Miss Maria Brogan. The Brogans are an old family, respectable. Maria's your distant cousin, but it's distant enough to allow for marriage. Not that the wizarding world has incest laws. They're far too busy with other things. Maria is a nice, respectable girl, twenty-two to your twenty, eldest in a family graced with four daughters and one son. You're getting a lot of in-laws. Pretty, very pretty, bright black eyes and hair. Polite, friendly, socially adept. Well-trained by her good family. She doesn't hate werewolves, just holds them in slight contempt. I visit you and feel that I am a lowly peasant and Marie Antoinette is offering me cake. She thought I'd forgotten her name when I accidentally called her Marie. She corrected me, with a look on her face that asks what one can expect from someone like me. Half-blood and a werewolf, too – what _can_ one expect? I apologized scrupulously.

You didn't notice. You, who used to be so protective of me, who used to half-kill people for looking at me wrong.

James will be your best man, of course. You were his. I'll sit on the groom's side. Everyone will assume I'm a cousin. You have enough of them. Few of them will realize that we are not related. Not by blood, anyway. Or perhaps we are – how much blood have we shared? How much of each other's blood have we ingested, vampire-like, when the moon made both of us mad and we rolled on the ground, playing like the puppies we were? I still had a babyishly fluffy coat until I was almost sixteen, and you ... you were always puppy-like, dog or not. I played roughly, I left scars on you from my teeth, my claws. It was okay.

You used to swear you would marry a Muggle-born girl, or a half-blood one, if you ever married at all. None of us were quite convinced you would. What, Sirius Black, womanizer extraordinaire? I know that your marriage to Maria is not a love match. I am sure that she comes with a dowry and your family paid a bride-price for her. How did you choose Maria? Did you select her from a list of worthy candidates upon whom to bestow your heart, expertly compiled by your loving mother? Did you just like her name? Did you pick her by Tarot from several options? Look at pictures and see who was the prettiest? I was rather surprised by her dark eyes. You always told me you preferred green. Or gold.

But once again, she has excellent taste in wedding invitations. Engraved, cordial, in a nice, thick, expensive-looking envelope of creamy parchment. Addressed in jet-black ink by a calligrapher, looks like. Or is that really Maria's handwriting? I wouldn't know. I never knew her. I only vaguely remember her from Hogwarts. Dark and pretty Maria Brogan of Slytherin House, two years older than any of the infamous Marauders. She never had anything to do with us. Nostalgically, I can't help but feel that she never will have anything to do with "us." "Us" is the Marauders, those bound together by initials deeply carved into the wood panelling of a classroom we claimed as our own room.

"Future generations will think we were some kind of weird foursome," James laughed as he deeply carved the shapes of the Gothic block letters I had sketched into the wooden floor under the grand piano. _M,W,P&P: The Marauders Ride Forever_. He never looked up at the ink drawing on the lower side of the piano bench, the rather good sketch of a dog and a wolf howling at the moon together. We didn't know how the piano got there, or who, if anyone, used it. The dusty cover was closed over the strings. None of you played; I'm the only musical one; but you three had fun with it, Peter just stickying the keys, you strumming odd, atonal chords that formed a strange and haunting melody, and James playing the one tune I taught him. Then you would always call me to the piano to demonstrate my mastery. All this, and you said you hated classical music ... a term that, for you, extended to anything composed before the twenties. You put up with it for me.

You put up with it for Maria, as well. She plays – beautifully, I might add. There is a lovely piano in the house you are to share after your marriage, bought with your old family gold. Her well-trained face never shows emotion as she makes music. That is one lesson you learned very well from your family; you still keep to it faithfully. Almost never do you show emotion – or rather, you have a set range of emotion that you show. Anger, yes; humor, yes; boredom, yes; insanity, yes. Not often discomfort, rarely sadness, seldom compassion, almost never love. I grew adept at seeing it, though – the warmth of your friendship with James, your respectful liking for Lily, your amused tolerance of Peter – these were love, for you. The softening in your eyes when you looked at a girl who had attracted your special attention. That love was short-lived, but it existed. I can always see love in you.

I see none for Maria.

But I knew, of course, that you were not expected to love Maria, and you didn't expect to yourself. It's a pureblood marriage between the compatible offspring of old and ancient families. You'll have your other lovers. She probably will too. You'll have just as much a parade of momentary lapdogs as you ever had – but now you get the added thrill of cheating on your wife. She'll do the same, though Maria is probably a virgin at this point. That's the way it works. Pureblood girls are expected to be practically cloistered until marriage. I've always perversely admired your cousin Bellatrix for breaking the norm. With her dark charm, she got away with it. After marriage, though, the newly married ladies can be whatever they like to whoever they like. That's pureblood custom, isn't it? And only half-breeds like me, outside observers, will admit it. But again, Maria is surely chaste at this point. You'll know soon, won't you?

And you'll have your lovers. A parade of lovely girls – maybe not all as pure of blood as Maria is. Maybe some of them will be men.

At the moment I am feeling pathetic. I wrote you a love letter.

I destroyed it, but I still feel pathetic.

But that's what I was for you. Hopelessly romantic enough to write such things. Practical enough to burn them. Wild and calm, virginal and loving. Someone your parents would never approve of, even if I wasn't your own gender; maybe that was the greatest attraction. I would ask, _Did you love me? _but I never expect an answer. Not from Sirius Black.

I understand. It hurts me to understand, but I do. I could see the pain in your eyes at every fresh missive from your mother. I stood beside you on the platform, waiting for the train after your summer with the Potters. I heard the nearly inaudible, puppy whine in your throat when you watched her kiss Regulus good-bye, and how you turned away, dragged me by the hand after you onto the train, grasping my fingers so tightly it hurt, though I wouldn't have dreamed of complaining. I saw you hex Regulus then on the first day back to school, and I saw your anger against him. I could always recognize love in you, Sirius.

You needed her approval. Warm as you were, you needed a family. You needed your mother.

Morbidly, I wish I knew how the reconciliation came about. Did she write you one of her infamous letters – "Marry one of these girls I've picked and placed in an alphabetized list, and maybe I will let you back into my heart"? "Be a good son and I'll be a good mother"? "Pretend to love her and I'll pretend to love you"? If she approached you, it was disguised as a new set of marching orders.

And if you approached her ... I doubt that. You are too proud to ask for your mother.

Aren't you, Sirius?

Well, you fulfilled the criteria, it seems. You're marrying this nice pureblood girl with her good taste in wedding invitations, and her good handwriting, if it is hers at all.

You know what hurt? I was half-expecting a personal note in that beautiful, if unreadable, script of yours. The impersonal invitation hurt. I was almost expecting "Please attend the marriage of Sirius Black and Maria Brogan" to be followed by something saying, "Dear Moony, I'm sorry to be marrying a pure-blood girl when I always said I'd marry a Muggle-born. I'm sorry to be marrying a girl my mother picked when I told you I loved you."

I was always so good at detecting love in you. Maybe not so good at detecting its absence. Or maybe it was the same kind of love I saw when I looked at you watching the girls. I thought it was different for me; maybe because I was your first boy, maybe because we were already friends, maybe because I am at heart a hopeless romantic.

Will Mother keep you under her beady eyes at all times? Or will you have time, in the dark of the night, to slip away like a romance hero and visit your old lover? No. No, you won't, and I shall be glad of it. I won't be your fairy-tale heroine. I'll live. I will go to your wedding and sit on the groom's side. I will wrap my hand in a napkin to protect my skin from the silverware. I will go to the wedding and throw the invitation away afterward. I will shake your hand, congratulate you. And then maybe afterward, I will go back to my flat and I will get thoroughly drunk for the first time in my life, and remember until I've drunk myself insensible. Remember how you always used to call me Remy, for instance (I called you Siri in retaliation until you told me that's what Bellatrix calls you). Remember when you drew the dog and wolf below the piano bench (I told you James would laugh, and you said you didn't care. He didn't notice). Remember all the places at Hogwarts that our initials are etched, very small, into the woodwork. In the morning, I'll probably suffer through my first hangover. The misery will distract me from thinking of how mercilessly you would tease me if you knew. It will distract me from wondering how your wedding night with Maria was. By then I'll have used my paid leave on this job and have been fired, so it won't matter if I stay in bed all day. But it'll be okay. Because I'll live. I'm good at it by now, I have some practice. Practice has not yet made perfect.

But I'll live.

So now I have to find some good dress robes, or borrow some from James ... that's probably what I'll do. I should look respectable, after all. I have a wedding to go to.

Don't I?

**End**


	2. Sirius: The Apology

I should have written him a note. I know I should have. There was a moment before Maria sealed the envelopes, when I could have just slipped it in casually. She'd have read it, though. I like Maria well enough, but sometimes she makes me want to scream. And if she had read it, the high holy hell Dear Old Mum would raise! Else Maria would keep the knowledge for a more opportune moment. Spend the rest of our mutual life with that hanging over my head? I think not.

Now here's a question I could ask him, if I dared to face him alone. How do you tell your wife-to-be, her mother and your mother that you couldn't possibly care less about cakes and dishes and flower? For efficiency's sake, I should say it. However . . . it might be hazardous to my health. I continue to dream up a creative excuse every time. Safety first.

I never wanted this traditional wedding. He knew it, I knew it, everyone in earshot knew it. I never wanted a traditional girl. I can't imagine what he must think. No. Wait. Scratch that. I can.

Why did I do this? As I've said many times to many teachers, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." In some ways it still does, in more ways I want to hang myself. I guess that makes me resigned.

But let me make one thing clear. The reconciliation with my mother was a perk. Not a motive. This isn't about Dear Old Mum. It's about him. Not that he did anything wrong, he never does. He's my personal saint. There's no other way to put it. But it is about him – and about me. The coward that I am. At the time I thought I was being noble.

I was scared of losing him. That's what it comes down to.

In today's world, it would have been too dangerous; it would have been too easy to forget to lock the doors and windows one night. In the eyes of our world, he's less than me. Our rank is different. Contrary to popular belief, I do read the papers for more than the crossword. I know what sometimes happens to the impure partner in mixed marriages. And besides, so many, in both our world and the Muggle one, are violently prudish. I hate to think what could have happened to him. To both of us, really.

But he lives alone now. _Not_ living with me might move him down a few places on the presumed list of targets, but he's still on it. Of course he is, being who and what he is. So I've accomplished – probably nothing.

I don't know if I was right to invite him to the wedding. James was no help in the decision – he was quietly simmering. Still is, really. It might help to sob out a declaration of love on his shoulder, but pride makes me practical: It wouldn't help much. I have to admire his loyalty. I'm hurting our friend, terribly, and yet James is in my wedding. I'm surprised Dear Old Mum didn't pick out my best man for me too.

I must say, I'm not _disappointed_ that she let me back into her heart. I'm rather glad she picked Maria. The more traditional my wife, the less likely it is that I'll be known for associating with those below me. And, hopefully, the safer he will be.

I take risks. It's the way I am. But I will not risk him. Every time I think this out – and I've thought it out many, many times. I've layered his ghost through every chamber of my brain. I've heard many hours struck off on many long nights. I've watched the moon through many phases while I went over it and over it.

Every time I think it out, I come back to that. _I can't risk him_. Maybe he can accept the risk, but I just can't.

A letter. If I'd written him that letter. If I'd written it, I could have told him: Not to hate me, please not to hate me. That I love him still. That I couldn't bear to lose him. That it was easier to let him go so I can hold him always, a perfect memory of a living saint, mostly good and silver-pure. His _memory_ will never be in danger, you see? That's probably all my letter would have said. That I'll remember him always, my saint, my friend, my lover, my Remus.


	3. Maria: The Marriage

Disclaimer - Not mine.

Note - every single chapter, I have truly believed that the story was done. I intended chapter one to be a one-shot, but Sirius wanted his side heard. Thanks to author Verasilyn, this is now the final chapter. For real this time.

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**Chapter Three**

**The Marriage**

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The funeral was not a pleasant affair. Not that funerals are, of course, but this one was decidedly unpleasant. Most of this was due to my awareness of Sirius's misery. It must have been hard on him, to stand in sober black robes and say sorrowful things about the old hag. It was a relief when she died even to me, who used to be fond of her. After I married Sirius, I became very much disillusioned with her. I became re-illusioned with Sirius; I hadn't thought I would care much for him. My family is not high-ranked, though we are respectable, and a marriage to Sirius Black for the eldest child was decidedly a step up – yet we all knew it was only because other families wished to shield their daughters from the famous rebel's influence. 

Sirius comes downstairs into the kitchen where I am standing at the sink, watering my plants. He is in Muggle clothing, brown jeans and a fresh snow-white shirt. His hair falls past his shoulders now, silky and thick, and he has caught it back into a ponytail with a wooden clasp. I like his looks better now, after nearly three years of marriage. He looked young when we married. He was, really – barely eighteen. Aging has brought out a quieter sort of beauty in him.

His penchant for Muggle clothing does not bother me either, as he is careful never to embarrass _me_. I've a cousin in Spain whose husband has a penchant for women's clothing.

Not that I wasn't worried about _that_ particular problem to begin with. I suspected it from the first time I saw him sitting alone next to that quiet, considerate Remus Lupin – pity he's a werewolf, I might rather like him if he weren't – and my suspicions were confirmed by the private talks between Sirius and his mother in the first two years, when we seemed unable to produce a child, talks from which Sirius emerged angry or upset, once in tears of frustration which he tried not to let me see.

At first I was disgusted that a married man was so much controlled by what his mother permitted, but again, I've come to know Tyana Black. Since her illness, he has become more self-possessed.

"Are you going out?" I ask Sirius, though it's obvious that he is.

"Yes," he says, and comes closer. He kisses the corner of my mouth, then kisses his palm and lays the hand on the gentle swell of my belly.

"I think it's a girl," I say. "It could be a boy, but I have a feeling."

Sirius shrugs. "A girl would be lovely," he says, with a smile and a shrug. "We have years to produce the required heir. If we don't, there's always Regulus."

"Your brother," I say dryly, "would not produce an heir if all the nubile virgins in England were paraded in front of him nude. Can you imagine him losing his self-control enough to climax?"

Sirius snorts his laughter. I've surprised him. He likes it when I do that, and I like to do it, to some extent. It adds another element to things.

Sirius, I think, is resigned. Let him have his nights out with his old friends. He keeps it all private, and he appears respectable in public. His rebellious days are over and he has behaved in a becoming manner since our marriage. Why not? There are stranger quirks.

"Don't wait up, Maria," he tells me as he leaves.

"I won't," I reply, and I fill the can to water my iris.

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_Apple pie with cream on it, one cup of coffee and one cup of tea. Cheap flatware and chipped china on a neat, small table for two. A small sitting room with a small fire. Shakespeare's Sonnets with a blue cover and a blue ribbon marking the place. A snapshot of four teenaged boys on the mantelpiece. One armchair; a spot on the rug pushed askew where someone has sat down. A warm bed behind a closed door, street light soft and misty through the blue curtains. A heap of clothing in the corner. One candle flickering on the nightstand to illuminate a heap of worn books and an elderly red quilt. And here is clarity. Here is passion. Here, finally, is fulfillment._

**End**


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